Miss Mae Mercer (vocal) Sonny Boy Williamson (harp), Willie Dixon (bass), Memphis Slim (piano) e Clifton James (drums). Germany TV 1964.
Born Mary Ruth Mercer in 1932 to tobacco-croppers, she was one of nine children and stood out as soon as he started singing in church. Once in New York, she cut several tracks for Atlas, the black-owned jazz and jump blues label, but only her sterling version of Lee Dorsey's "Great Googa Mooga" – paired with her take on Tampa Red's "Sweet Little Angel" – was released in 1959.
The following year, Mercer travelled to Paris, where she met Maurice Girodias, the French publisher of erotica alongside avant-garde novels like Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man and The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. He engaged her to sing at the Blues Bar, one of four clubs he owned near the offices of his Olympia Press company. She was an intense performer, often drinking an ampoule buvable – a cocktail of vitamins – to boost her stamina before going on stage. Indeed, she proved so popular that she ended up running the venue and paved the way for the success of Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson, two of the many visiting American musicians she worked with. By 1965, she was such a prominent figure in Europe that she was profiled in Ebony magazine.
Mercer spent much of the Eighties raising her own children, as well as a niece and a nephew, but in 1996 she recorded an album entitled When He Called It Quit for Blackhawk Records. In recent years, she had guest roles in the TV series ER and The Shield.
Tall, thin and strikingly beautiful, Mercer possessed a powerful voice as mesmerising as her physical appearance. Her stunning version of the blues standard "Careless Love", shot for German TV in the Sixties and included on the 2004 DVD Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson: Blues Legends In Europe, featuring Williamson on harmonica and Hubert Sumlin on guitar, is a gem. The Chess Records legend Willie Dixon rather misguidedly introduces Mercer as "the little girl with the real low-down blues" – but there's no mistaking the intensity of her performance.
If you like what I’m doing, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! - ”LIKE”
When Mae Mercer was in London in 1964 Mike Vernon at Decca got her into the studio on 1st September to record four tracks accompanied by a jazz quintet. She re-recorded Sweet Little Angel/Great Googa Mooga (as G.G.) plus Have You Ever Had The Blues and Blues Around My Bed (this one of the unreleased songs from the Atlas session). These four songs were released in January 1965 on a Decca EP (DFE 8599).
ReplyDeleteThanks Alan! Great Information!
ReplyDelete